Insanejournal
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InsaneJournal is a weblog service which allows Internet users to maintain an online journal, or "blog." It runs on the open-source LiveJournal code. The site, created in 2001, has over 29,841 members as of 27 July 2006. InsaneJournal tries to separate itself by developing features that don't exist on the other LiveJournal code based sites don't yet have, as well as staying on the bleeding edge of the development of the LiveJournal code.
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[edit] Beginnings
[edit] Creation
In Mid-October 2001, InsaneJournal owner, Jason Vervlied, decided to attempt to run the open source LiveJournal source code as a way to further familiarize himself with perl, linux, Apache, and MySQL. As his wife wanted a blog for her hown personal uses, he created a site under her existing domain name, journal.insanityspeaks.com, this is what lead to the name InsaneJournal. After working on the site for a couple of weeks, on October 30, 2001. The site was finally up and running as can be noted in this entry [1]. While officially opening the site to the public on November 4, 2001.
[edit] Early problems with the site
For the first year and 3 months of InsaneJournal's existence the site ran on an old workstation in Jason Vervlied's dining room. This caused problems due to issues with the ADSL connection that the site ran off of as well as any residential power problems would promptly take the site offline. Once the site reached around 2,000 user's it was decided that it was time to move into a more professional environment.
[edit] Later Years
[edit] Moving up
In January of 2003, InsaneJournal was moved out of the dining room and onto a colocated server. Along with this change the URL for the site was changed to [2]. Along with this change, InsaneJournal decided to become a for-profit business and started to accept payments for privileged accounts.
[edit] Those Pesky Ads
In July of 2003, InsaneJournal was started participating in the Google Adsense program. This allowed the site to start generating a much larger revenue stream. To this day, InsaneJournal, still displays these ads to all users who are not logged in as a paid account.
[edit] No More Invite Codes
On March 21, 2004 InsaneJournal stopped using the invite code system. This was done to increase the number of user's using the site. The LJ-code base had become efficient enough that InsaneJournal could handle the amount of users that would come on board without invite codes
[edit] Our own Server
On May 31, 2004, InsaneJournal was finally bringing in enough revenue to move onto its own server. With the move came faster response times and better stability.
[edit] New Design and Logo/Mascot
In January, 2005, InsaneJournal introduced a new site design, that had a new logo which included a funny looking face. A contest with names submitted by users, and then voted on by users was completed by the and of January, and the new site mascot was named Tweak.
[edit] Slow Decline
Throughout 2005 InsaneJournal's usage slowly began to decline. It is believe that this is due to the rise in popularity of sites like Xanga and MySpace. InsaneJournal's owner tried to re-organize and stimulate the revenue streams of the site several times. He, also tried to increase interest in the site by increasing the limits on user's pictures, and friend limits.
[edit] Statistics/Demographics
Much like LiveJournal, DeadJournal and GreatestJournal, users of the service are predominantly female. Females comprise 79.7% of the service, outweighing males at a ratio of almost 4:1.
These are site usage statistics, as of July 27, 2006:
- 29,841 accounts have been created.
- 685 accounts are currently active
- 9,654 have been posted to at least once
- 365 have been posted to in the past 30 days.
- 179 have been posted to in the past seven days.
- 65 have been posted to in the past 24 hours.
InsaneJournal is most frequently used in the following nations (based on users who declared a nation of residence):
- United States: 6,335 accounts
- Canada: 409 accounts
- United Kingdom: 280 accounts
- Australia: 121 accounts
- Japan: 43 accounts
- Philippines: 47 accounts
For complete and current statistics, see the InsaneJournal Stats page.
[edit] Decline
Like other LJ-based journal sites, a massive decline in popularity began with the Xanga and MySpace booms. While this seems to have leveled off, growth of this site and others like it has been extremely slow.
